Kate Chopin 's The Story Of An Hour

In the past many decades the definition of what a marriage means changed dramatically in some areas. For the author of both stories, Kate Chopin, she wanted the reader to get something out of the story. She likes to explore all types of themes in her stories such as, racism, the roles of women, and adultery. With these themes and messages she struggled to have most of her stories published. In many of her stories she passed along these messages through the manner of a marriage. In her short stories “The Story of an Hour” and “Desiree 's Baby” she showed just how different marriages could be as well as how similar they can be. Chopin portrays the lives of the main characters, Louise Mallard from “The Story of An Hour” and Desiree Aubigny

Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor discusses many topics and insights that can be found in literature. Foster explains how each are used and the purposes they serve while providing numerous examples. Many of Foster’s insights can be found in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” which was written during a time in history when women were often restricted by society and marriage. The story speaks of a woman who felt freed from the burden of marriage when she thought her husband died, only to die the moment she realized he was actually alive. Foster’s insights about weather, heart disease, and flight that are evident in “The Story of An Hour” greatly influence the story’s interpretation in several ways.

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of An Hour” was published in 1894 in Vogue, during a time when women do not have any legal rights. They have low education level and have no opportunity to work; what they can do is stay at home and manage the family. All their lives, they rely on their husband. Women at that time do not think about why they should be treated this way; they were being silenced by society. Kate Chopin uses the character Mrs. Mallard as the representative of all women who wants freedom at that time, and she criticizes the way society treats them, yet the difference of Mrs. Mallard’s values compared to society’s makes her become egotistic and her death end up not changing people’s mind of how to treat women properly.

In the story of an hour, Kate Chopin has depicted a tone amongst many wives of the late nineteenth century. Women, by this time, were very far from the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution or the “Women’s Suffrage Movement.” What this explains is that women of this era are still being undermined by society, neither unequal nor independent from that of the voice of the masculine gender. This treatment towards women was a domestic one. Many betrothed women of this timeframe were unhappy in their marriages, due to a culture that shunned the idea of a free and empowered woman. The underlying meaning that Kate Chopin wanted to convey in The Story of an Hour, is that woman of the late nineteenth century were repressed, unhappy, and imprisoned in their marriages.

Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” represents a primitive perspective of marriage by presenting the reader with a woman that is thrilled that her husband passed away. This is conveyed through the language used to describe Louise’s emotions as she shifts between numbness and euphoria at her instant individuality. The narrator relates what she sees in simple text, but when her emotions are described, the words are bright and potent. This implies that Louise has an unaffiliated life that is numb to the outside world and her alone time is invaluable to her. The environment surrounding her is only minimally described, but the narrator describes the image in her head as an oasis. The view outside of her room is paradisiacal like her mind, but

I read the book called The Story of an Hour, and in that story the main character Kate Chopin sheds goodness in one hour of Mrs. Mallard’s life. She used the theme of secretly being an unhappy wife with a bad heart, to shed happiness on the journey of feelings Mrs. Mallard spends the entire hour to compare how her husband’s death is exactly as her own’s death. From when at that moment “she wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms” (pg. 555) to the most shocking moment that stopped her heart when she finds after all this time he is alive and well, her emotions and thoughts are expressed with this fresh and new perspective she has of the entire world. In that very moment she told her self in a whisper like voice “free!

"The Story of an Hour" is about a young lady, named Mrs. Mallard. The story describes of how she is heartbroken, upon hearing of her husband's death. The buddy of Mrs. Mallard's messaged this tragic news. However, Mrs. Mallard's sister was the one who told her. What happens next is a bit unusual. Mrs. Mallard goes to her room and starts to feel something new. It is, actually, a feeling of relief. Now, Mrs Mallard thinks that she has the rest of her life just for herself.

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is a short story about an hour in time. In that hour we find out that the main character Louise Mallard’s husband has been killed in a railroad disaster. The husband Brently Mallard’s friend is the one who finds the news but realizes that Louise needs to be told with great delicacy due to her heart condition. Upon hearing the news Louise like most grieves immediately. But as she contemplates what has happen and her future she realizes she if finally free the confines of marriage. Even though she loved her husband most of the time she looks at this disaster not as a terrible tragedy but as a new lease on life. Then the unthinkable happens, her husband walks through the door. Instead of relinquishing

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, a young woman named Louise Mallard received news that her husband has passed. Mrs. Mallard’s feeling of freedom is matched by her guilt of his death. Mrs. Mallard had an internal conflict for her desire to be independent vs. society’s role for women.

Despite her craving for liberation, Mrs. Mallard still experienced heartbreak from her loss. She cried “ wild tears” when her sister relayed the message (Chopin 1). Women are supposed to be an emotional wreck without her husband. She was expected to be a broken woman by all of society, but what if she wasn’t so broken? The critic, Barbara Ewell said “love is not a substitute for selfhood; indeed selfhood is loves precondition.” Mrs. Mallard didn’t hate her husband; She simply desired self-independence more than her marriage. Any longing for female autonomy was hushed by the 19th century, patriarchal society and thus, cognizant of societal expectations, Mrs. Mallard responds to the news of her husband’s death with expected devastation.

The process of conveying meaningful messages consists of not only seeking the courage and effort to do so, but also the pursuit of attracting audiences through different and creative approaches. For Kate Chopin, the famous author of “The Awakening” and “The Story of an Hour”, her most successful approach was to provide audiences with short stories that proposed meaningful and strong messages. However, Kate Chopin’s powerful feminist images that were present throughout her writing has mostly flaunted Chopin as only a “pioneering feminist writer,” which has led to other messages Chopin incorporated in her writing into being overlooked. In Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour”, the short story describes the diverse emotions Louise Mallard undergoes after hearing of her husband’s railroad death. The protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, embodies feelings of liberation and freedom as she said, “Free! Body and Soul free!!” (Chopin) Yet, when she discovers her husband was still alive as he stood in the doorway of her house that same day, her shock overwhelms her and Louise suddenly dies of a heart attack. For the most part, this story has been taught solely from a feministic outlook, but if profoundly analyzed, Chopin’s story reveals that the story itself proposes indirect and subtle themes that reflect the social impacts that the developments of technology and time brought upon society during Chopin’s time.

“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin expresses Ms. Mallard’s feelings towards her husband’s death in an appalling train accident. Due to her bad heart, her sister Josephine had to be the bearer of bad news and approach his death gently to her. According to the quote, “ But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought”, it lets us know that she is quite different than other women and that there is conniving plan she has developed in her mind (31). Ironically, the horrific news brings happiness to her because of her new ability to be free. We notice of her changing personality and her broadened outlook as she sits in her room staring out of the window. As she is dreaming of the lively dreams, we see her become more independent as a woman and actually want to better herself to make her happy. It seems that Ms. Mallard has waited for this moment from her husband’s existence so that she can discover who she really is. Ms. Mallard finds unexpected freedom by her reaction to her husband’s death, the reaction to him actually being alive, and in the marriage among Mr. and Ms. Mallard.

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Chopin, Mrs. Mallard is afflicted with an internal conflict of guilt because of the feeling of happiness she feels when she finds out that she is finally free to do as she desires do to her husband’s death. She has the feeling of guilt do to her happiness that she can finally do what she wants, but she knows that society does’t have a roll in the things she wants. Mrs. Mallard has an internal conflict between the desire to be independent and society’s role for women.

Mary Astell, a sixteenth-century English writer, once stated: “If all men are born free, how is it that all women are born slaves?” Undeniably, since the beginning of time women have been enslaved by society’s unwritten mandate for a woman’s life: find an agreeable suitor, marry, produce children and be the perfect housewife, at risk of being deemed abnormal if these actions are not accomplished by a certain age. In the short story “The Story of an Hour”, author Kate Chopin illustrates a woman’s sundry emotions upon hearing of her husband’s death. To the woman’s own surprise, she experiences feelings of relief and a newfound freedom. Having lived in the 19th century, Chopin challenged society’s perception of women at the time in this honest, liberating drama.

People that have no purpose in life are unhappy and unsatisfied, therefore they cannot continue with life as they once did or continue with life at all. Purpose to live is what will keep pushing us to continue trying the most we can to be able to succeed with our goals, but if we lack purpose, we have absolutely nothing at all. Humans can overcome every single situation that it’s placed in their way, but if they don’t have any reason to overcome it, then is just unnecessary and unlikely to happen. Viktor E. Frankl emphasizes this statement in his small poem; “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”